Author Archives: Bob

Two more Koufax mentions

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(UPDATE: Voting is open. To vote, just visit any of the four links, scroll down, and leave a comment at the bottom as your vote for whomever you like.  To vote in other categories, go here.)

A quick thanks to the kind folks at Wampum for mentioning puduland here to two more categories in their preliminary voting for the Koufax Awards. The voting hasn’t started yet, but this site will be up for (sanely or not) four awards:

Flattering as heck, and frankly not terribly accurate. I think there are more deserving sites in each category. There are people who only do funny, and they post a lot more, and they deserve the Most Humorous. And there are people doing real hardball investigative stuff every day, and they surely deserve the Best Series and Best Blog stuff. Best Writing? Even if I was freakin’ Shakespeare (who rarely used the word freakin’ incidentally, much less kiester, gigondous, or waterpudu) I’d assume that should go to someone who at least blogs more frequently than I do.

Still, it’s nice to be mentioned.

So go over to Wampum, thank them for the work they put into this, poke around the other named sites (there are over 100 good ones to choose from, between all the categories), and maybe even throw a dime or two in their tip jar for pulling together so much good stuff in one click-friendly place.

And when the voting starts, yeah, I’ll probably mention it, but really. There are more deserving blogs.

It’s not like the categories are:

  • Best Pudus
  • Oddest Set Of Interests
  • Most Intermittent
  • Best Things That Aren’t Pudus That The Blogger Insists On Calling Pudus Anyway

In which case, now we’d be talking.

AP has seen tapes of pre-Katrina briefing: Bush was warned, and is a liar

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Hard to imagine, but true, and the proof is on tape:

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings.

Four days after the storm, Bush was on TV claiming that "I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Liar.  He simply ignored the warnings —

Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

— exactly the same way Bush ignored the intelligence estimates warning of hostility to occupation and eventual civil war in Iraq.  Exactly the same way Bush ignored the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike Within U.S."  Exactly the same way Bush continues to ignore federal law, the constitution of the United States, and international law.

There may just be a pattern here.

Read the new poll closely: US troops want out of Iraq and don’t even know why they’re there

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Pretty amazing how f’d up this poll of the troops shows Bush’s war really is.  Absolutely amazing.  A lot of people are noticing this:

No less than 72 percent said U.S. troops should stay no longer than one year in Iraq.

But what about this?  While our troops at least know enough not to believe some of the bullshit —

[T]hree in four soldiers said ‘’establish(ing) a democracy that could be a model for the Arab world” — the justification most recently cited by Bush — was neither the ‘’main” nor even a ‘’major reason” for the U.S. intervention.

More than 90 percent also did not accept the justification most cited by the administration before the war — to enforce U.N. resolutions requiring the destruction or removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq.

— the two main reasons they still seem to believe were completely discredited years ago:

Remarkably, the two justifications most frequently mentioned by the troops were those that were discredited after the invasion.  Forty-one percent said stopping ‘’Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq” was the ‘’main reason,” while another 36 percent said it was a ‘’major reason.”  At the same time, 35 percent said ‘’retaliat(ing) for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks” was the ‘’main reason”, and 50 percent called it a ‘’major reason.”

Where the hell are they getting their information?  Imagine Vietnam soldiers thinking they were there to keep Hanoi from protecting Cuba, or to avenge the sinking of the U.S. Maine.

Wow.

Gunshots to the face will make us stronger

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How will the White House explain Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face?
If you’re innocent, you shouldn’t mind a shotgun blast to the face
966 60.8%
The Patriot Act gives Cheney the legal authority to shoot guys in the face
355 22.4%
Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt all shot guys in the face, too
177 11.1%
The victim’s face was harboring Al-Qaeda’s #3 man
90 5.7%

New poll at left.